jagdish wrote:Thorium based molten salt reactor could work on a ship or land but not on a drone or any flying vehicle due to its weight. RTG using fission products might be best for unmanned flying objects.

I think the real idea is to power aircraft with synthetic fuels made with cheap MSR reactor energy.

Closed cycle would mean minimum waste fuel particularly actinides which can be used for fission, some in more than one step. Creation of U233 will require use of thorium as part of fuel or as a blanket. In production reactors, only the Indian pfbr is being built to use a thorium blanket. Shippingpo...

It is nice if Thor energy is already developing it but it has to be subjected to user trials. The aim should be a closed cycle, reduce dependence on further mining and reduce used fuel stocks. Thor Energy is a consortium that has companies like Westinghouse and several nuclear operators as its part...

It may be time to develop, at a laboratory scale, thorium-plutonium or thorium-leu bundles for existing reactors, designed as core-blanket bundles. User trials could be held overseas in places allowing them. China or India could develop solid fuel thorium breeders and consume the irradiated thorium...

If you're running an MSR on greater than 5% enriched uranium fuel, you're running it on HEU. The only difference being that the government downblended it before you got it, and then you downblend it even further. Is that a complaint against Terrestrial's IMSR or against the current enriched uranium...

'What I am hearing from those that have evaluated their system is perhaps a 10% improvement in uranium utilization over today's PWRs, and likely inferior fuel performance relative to CANDUs.' They should get about a forty percent improvement in efficiency from hotter steam ( ~ 33% to 45% ), and, al...

Arguably the advantage of the IMSR is speed to market. Though obviously that is speculative at this point in time. Ultimately it depends how many technical and regulatory hurdles there are to overcome and which of the two design teams can most quickly overcome the hurdles applicable to their design...

Then how is it that any reactor can attain criticality on natural uranium ? They use moderators such as heavy water or graphite to slow their neutrons to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, while avoiding much absorption in the moderator. In this way they are able to achieve criticality wi...

Then how is it that any reactor can attain criticality on natural uranium ? Isn't the problem of fast reactors not having enough distance for neutrons to find a target and avoid being lost ? Once they do find a target, they produce more neutrons than a thermal reactor. Or maybe such a reactor would ...

I'm not a nuclear engineer. I have a bare bone notion of what I'm talking about... My best hope is perhaps I inspire others onto something. Maybe after radical changes. And most of all details which are clearly lacking, since I don't know enough to estimate the behavior of the initial idea to get in...

Only ignorants believe in solar roadways. They don't represent anything about solar photovoltaic potential or limitations. Solar PV must be inclined towards the equator for average best generation. The premisses are easily disprovable. Meanwhile, there are several MW large solar PV farms in the worl...

Why is it so hard to build nuclear power plants? Answer: Cuz people are afraid of them. What might happen if you start wide-scale of lithium ion battery use within or adjacent to substations? Answer: They might start exploding - big time http://www.consumerreports.org/safety-recalls/why-lithium-ion...

Dear E Ireland, I'll tell you just one thing. By end of 2017, end of 2018, end of 2019 you'll be saying the same things, and solar/wind deployments will continue to explode. Tesla PowerPacks/PowerWalls will drop in cost by at least 50% from now to 2020. Realize that Tesla isn't even making 1GWh/yr i...